A Reason to Fight
by Windflight
Summary: Centered on Kagura, and exploring the reasons behind her actions. Slight SessKagu.


This is a one shot for my favorite character, Kagura, centered on the reason she fights. It's partially influenced by the Evangelion DVD I just watched. Read and Review!

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_"These Shikon shards, I'll give them to you… if you kill Naraku… and release me from him."_

"Why?" His voice was cold and calculating, floating easily through the night air with the sound of one confident of his own position, and yet it also contained a note of genuine curiosity.

"What?" I snapped back, angered by his earlier refusal. I reached up and teased a feather loose from my hair tie but still stood there, lingering, waiting to see what he had to say.

A fresh bout of wind blew by, ruffling my bangs and propelling leaves and bits of grass off the cliff-side and far into the distance, twirling and turning, captured by the wind's wild dance. I looked longingly up at the night sky dotted with stars, hoping that one day I might soar like that wind, wild and free, released from the earth.

"Why do you continue to fight?"

Sesshoumaru's voice snapped me out of my reverie, and I turned around to face him, meeting his indifferent golden eyes. His companions, the toad and the human girl, watched our interaction from a safe distance, the girl curious and the toad resentful.

"What do you mean?" I retorted, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"If you want Naraku dead, then why do you continue to serve him?" His amber orbs bored into me, demanding that I tell truth.

I snorted, snapping my fan closed with a flick of the wrist. "Why?" I imitated him in a mocking tone. "Because he holds my life in his hands, that's why. It's not like I chose to serve him."

"Is it freedom you seek?"

"Hmph. Let me tell you a story, Lord Sesshoumaru. Once upon a time there was a foolish man who sought to capture the wind. When the wind blew, he reached out his hands to catch it, but the wind merely flowed around his hands, and continued on, as if he had never been there. Angered, the man made a net out of the thickest cloth, and held it out as the wind went by. The net filled up quickly, and the silly man, thinking he had succeeded, gleefully brought down the net to see what he had caught. But the net was empty, containing only immobile air."

I paused to look at him; he had remained expressionless throughout the entire tale, and it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

I closed my eyes, a bitter smile on my face. "Here's the moral of the story: the wind cannot be captured, no matter how hard you try. It must be free, or it shall soon die."

"Then only death awaits you."

I snapped. "WHAT DO YOU KNOW! You've never had to live knowing your life was in the hands of another; forced to do as they bid you, never knowing the taste of true freedom."

"No. I haven't. But in your search for freedom, how many other lives have you crushed, all for the hope of a nonexistent possibility?" He started to turn away, cold façade never once wavering.

I smirked at his response, shouting at his retreating back, "Who are you to talk? How many lives has the great Sesshoumaru taken? Hundreds? Thousands? It's better to have hope and a goal to work for then nothing at all."

He tilted his head back at me, regarding me with one golden eye. "Hope is a weak human emotion." The eye closed and he disappeared into the forest, followed closely by his companions.

"You!" I hissed under my breath, fingers tightening over my fan, resisting the urge to slice him in half. No good would come of attacking a youkai as strong as him. And he was right.

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Fire, demon fire, flickered over the chains that held me pinned to the dungeon wall. Ignoring the pain, I twisted around in my shackles and gazed out the single barred window at the faint night sky. Somewhere out there, the winds would still be dancing, and one day, I will join them in their dance.

'_Hope is all that I have left.'_

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I lay in a field of white flowers, their brightness contrasting with the blacked hole in my chest. Pain wracked through me, and I coughed up blood. I was dying, I knew that, and yet I was finally free. How ironic; I had finally achieved my goal, my freedom, the objective that I lived for, and now that I had, I would die.

A familiar aura permeated through the meadow, and I looked up to see Sesshoumaru staring down at me. The question must have shown on my face, for he answered my unspoken inquiry.

"I came following the scent of Naraku's miasma."

I looked down, my newly restored heart aching. "Heh. You'll be disappointed. Naraku isn't here."

"I knew that it was you."

My head snapped up, and I looked at him in disbelief. He knew, and yet he still came?

I smile, perhaps the first sincere smile in my short life. We stay gazing at each other, unmoving, content, as my life force slowly trickles out from beneath my fingers.

"You seem happy." Then he adds, "Perhaps it was not so foolish after all."

"W-what wasn't?" I asked, feeling the last of my strength give out.

"Hope."


End file.
